Contemporaneous: Chapters’ 14 – 15
I sit back to read the opening of Melody’s manuscript: 14. Tianna was named after Tiananmen Square, her Chinese mother romanticising the homeland before she fled to Australia – or West Australia, to be precise, where she met Dylan Copley, a mail sorter sorting mail in the city’s central post office, although at different stages of his life he had aspired to play lead guitar in a band, become an actor, to be a stand-up comedian, before life’s little cruelties had sorted his aspirations into the impossibles basket. Of course, Tianna knew none of this as she picked at her lumpy mashed potatoes during family dinner. Mother insisted…
Contemporaneous: Chapters’ 8 – 12.
8. I wake too early like I ‘ve done every day since I was on antidepressants for five years over twenty years ago, and they fucked with my sleep, and even now, even with them clean from my system, the side-effects they introduce remain. Grabbing my phone from the bedside drawer where my clock radio sits, I check it, tensing as I expect some Lana diatribe. Sometimes she does that, sending me an essay detailing why I’ve behaved so poorly, a guided tour into my inadequacies that immerses me in guilt that overwhelms any equilibrium I have, until all that remains is the doubt that maybe, just maybe, I…